Intel exiting its longtime server business | Hacker News Reader

Intel exiting its longtime server business

servethehome.com

85 pointsjacooper36 comments

I didn't even know intel made their own servers... it's usually supermicro or OEM's like Dell or HP.

Yeah, for a second I thought the title referred to CPUs for servers.

It is hard to title since they are stopping servers, but not server CPUs.

Maybe call them server units?

We are going to have a Dell PowerEdge review tomorrow. We call that a server or more than one servers not server units so that would feel strange to me.

I see, it's not easy to just call them "server units." Good to get input from those who actually use them.

"Exiting the server business" is unnecessarily ambiguous - "will no longer sell servers" would be an improvement.

'completed server systems' maybe? Something that makes it clear it is a complete computing device, not just the core component of one.

I would've gone with "prebuilt servers" or "rackmounted servers". Those are of course simplifications, but would make it a bit clearer that it's referring to specific server hardware and not servers entirely.

That would sound either like they are selling custom servers or kits, or they are selling servers in other form factors like towers which both Dell and HP have.

Intel's servers are usually OEMed to some other maker taking Intel's design and using them as the basis of their solution.

The Intel case is pretty recognizable, and I see it time and time again with various vendors hardware kit.

Intel definitely made supercomputers. The i860-based Paragon was legendary in my youth.

Intel has always made white box servers that others resell, since the days of the quad slot xeon 450MHz

Interesting... I had a HP LH4 back in the day...

(quad p2-era Xeon @500mhz each, they made a rackmount model, but the thing had to be like 6U and weighed a tonne... I had the "pedestal" model.)

So even back then they weren't on my radar.

This is crazy. I have used a lot of intel technology and developed for it for such a long time but this is the first time I am ever hearing of Intel actually selling full servers and not just the CPU and the chip sets.

BTW they also make mini PCs https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/details/nuc...

I assumed these mini PCs were a byproduct of their expertise in the server field.

The Intel NUCs are great. I'm currently writing this on a Serpent Canyon, which is a 14 core 12th Gen Alder Lake platform with one of their discrete Arc cards on board. It's super compact for the specs it has; fits in my backpack with my Samsung tablet which I use as a display when I go travelling. I'm a big size/performance nerd, and this has the grunt to do some gaming and development locally. Anything requiring a bit more oomf I just use a cloud instance for anyway. All I need is a power and Thunderbolt cable. Any issues I've run into have been GPU related, with it being 1st Gen hardware, but nothing insurmountable so far. This is it: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/231480/...

They started making NUCs to push their client customers to make more competitive products with their hardware, so the Intel marketing line goes. I guess if anyone is going to push the envelope, it would be the guys and girls who make the chips that drive them.

In the mid-2000s I built a pretty large webhosting company entirely on Intel servers bought off Ebay. They had really high build quality and were less idiosyncratic than Dell or Compaq/HP. (I never had to deal with weird management consoles or drivers.) And were a lot cheaper.

Ah the good old days, back before Intel realized they could just tweak two transistors on their chips and sell it again next year for twice the price and people will apparently just buy it.

We will miss these. Super reliable and feature rich, and much less expensive than the Dell/HP options.

Tyan (which was the ODM for the Intel boxes) and Quanta are generally speaking in the same ballpark. Though you miss out on the extra QC that Intel or a Dell DCS would do for you if you order direct.

I built a few of them back around 2008. Bought the parts from a tech wholesaler as we were a reseller then. They were quality and good value too.

What exactly do they still make? Getting out of the server market, don't really have a mobile market, desktop market is floundering... what else is there?

Intel is still making plenty of server CPUs (and other components).

This is servers, the systems like Dell, Supermicro, and others sell, not server CPUs (aka Xeons)

Is it so surprising that Intel's server line is unmemorable, given the sexy names such as A2U44X25NVMEDK?

Well that was the part number for the NVMe expansion kit. TBH that is one of the hardest things about doing server reviews on YouTube... The model names

I've always wondered, do you have some kind of cheat sheet that you read from when you do your reviews on YouTube? Or full on teleprompter? I've always been very impressed by your ability to remember SuperMicro model numbers. Sometimes I wonder how many takes a certain segments must have taken.

Sometimes 2-3 tries but that is also from pacing. I usually have my laptop out to reference quickly but no prompter. People can tell when I read from one, so I have just had to get comfortable without reading.

Is the idea similar to NUC but for servers instead? (Probably a grossly inaccurate approximation)

I guess they still offer their CPUs, chipsets, and SSDs for servers?

As the article says, they are a silicon company not an assembly company.

Intel actually exited the SSD (and NAND flash) business. It was sold to SK Hynix and renamed to Solidigm.

Correct.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-...

My guess is that they're cutting the portfolio down to feature only chipsets and add-in cards. Just CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, ASICs, networking, and the associated add-in cards for all of the above. It makes sense if anything - it really focuses on their core business. No more side-projects with questionable profitability.

In the last 2 years since Pat Gelsinger took over, they've cut RealSense, Movidius, Optane Memory, IPO'd MobileEye, and now exited the Server Systems business. The only odd-balls left are their NUC business. Considering how popular these are in the enterprise market I can't it going anywhere any time soon, beyond spinning it out into a separate company, but it seems like the strategy has pretty much come to fruition. Now their balance sheet is in check, and their Intel Foundry Service taking customer ready for the new fabs to come online, I could see them really coming back into relevancy again.

I remember when Intel ISP2150 servers were everywhere. And lightly re-skinned by the likes of SGI, VA Linux, and many others.

TIL intel sold servers

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